Lettering a dinner-table argument

A dinner table is a trap for letterers. Plates already occupy the lower third. If I park Ben’s balloon on the gravy, the joke becomes a smudge. If I stack four balloons in the upper left, Reed looks as if he is chairing a board.

The working method: pencil the food first, then place tails so they do not cross a fork. Sue’s quieter lines sit lower and smaller; she does not need to shout to hold a force-field around a jug. Johnny can interrupt from the right edge, even from off-panel, because heat arrives before he does. Reed’s captions — those narrative boxes people expect from Fantastic Four comics — stay short enough to read between mouthfuls.

We test lettering on a photocopy of the collector’s own tablecloth pattern when they send one. A busy floral will kill a thin font. In that case I thicken the balloon stroke and drop a caption rather than fight the roses.